Christmas Ornaments

While traveling, we typically like to avoid major tourist areas, however, there is one thing we always go to tourist shops for.... Christmas Ornaments! We started a tradition a few years ago of collecting Christmas ornaments from every where we travel. It's so fun to be able to reminisce over great memories every Christmas season as we decorate the tree with our ornaments from around the world. Here are a few of our favorites!

Tahiti

Riviera Maya

Kauai

NYC

Nicaragua

Oahu

New Zealand

New Zealand Part 2 - South Island

After exploring the warm North Island, we flew over to the South Island to find an extreme temperature drop but also the most extraordinary scenery either of us had ever seen in our lives. Below are our top spots to check out on New Zealand's South Island!

Driving the beautiful Arthur's Pass. This drive was stunning.

Hike to Fox and Franz Josef glaciers. These glaciers were about 15 minutes from the beach.

Take a cruise through Milford Sound

Milford Sound

Milford Sound

Milford Sound

Hiking at dawn in Queenstown.

Walk around Queenstown Harbor and downtown. There was a cool little hike in the hills above the city.

Hike the Kepler Trek

Dunedin Lighthouse

Downtown Dunedin

Go on an adventure hunt to find penguins. They were the cutest little guys ever.

Check out the funky beach town of Hokitika

Dining beachside in Hokitika. This was a cool little sleepy beach town.

New Zealand Part 1 - North Island

We kicked off our travels this year with a New Zealand and Tahiti trip. Since both New Zealand Islands are completely different and with Tahiti being a whole other beauty, this post is just on New Zealand's North Island where we kicked off the trip. We arrived in a time zone 23 hours ahead of PST. The slang is different and we had to get used to driving on the left side of the road. Along the way, we saw some of the most beautiful scenery we had ever seen and that probably exists as well. We rented a camper van with a bed and kitchenette and spent the night in holiday parks or at the beach, depending on where we were. One thing that we didn't realize about New Zealand was how much driving there was to do. We spent the majority of our time driving from point to point but enjoyed the beautiful views that the country had to offer along the way.

We surfed a few times on all sides of the island. Raglan, having been featured in the movie Endless Summer and the known surfing mecca of NZ, was of course something we really wanted to explore and we had one of the most exciting adventures of our lives there. Our second day in Raglan greeted us with high winds and blown out surf. We took a narrow and windy dirt road around an isolated coastal mountain just south of Raglan to get to a surf break that was more isolated from the howling wind. We finally arrived at Ruapuke to overhead sets and insane rip currents. The conditions weren't great but it was beautiful there and the water was warm which was nice since we had just come from wearing wetsuits being winter time back home in California.

The Kiwis are really nice. They are always willing to lend a helping hand and give you directions, food, whatever it is that you need. The country is very clean too. There was no trash or litter anywhere. It was really impressive how thoughtful and respectful they were to their land. There definitely was a much more communitive effort and shared responsibility to take care of their land.

Here are a few highlights from the North Island:

Bay of Islands

Cooking brawts for dinner by the lake

Spent the night in our van at Red Beach

Surfing Ruapuke in Raglan

Raglan Harbor

It's so pretty everywhere!

We stayed the night at a funky little ski lodge up in the mountains

At the top of Red Crater during the steep Mt. Tongariro hike

Emerald lakes of the Mt. Tongariro hike

Every twist and turn in the road led to another gorgeous lake

Hot springs in Rotorua

Hiking in the rain down to Cathedral Cove beach

Cathedral Cove Beach

Digging the hole for our natural spa at Hot Water Beach

The natural hot springs under the sand made for a nice hot spa at the beach

Heading out to surf in Whangamata

Mike surfing in Whangamata

Vacationing in a campervan was awesome!

A night out in Auckland

Hiking in the Hollywood Hills + El Porto Surf

While Mike was working a conference in LA this weekend, we decided to take advantage of being in the area  to do some new exploring in LA.

We did the hike to the Hollywood sign via the Hollyridge trail which is the trail that is the closest you can get to the actual Hollywood sign. A big fence and security cameras stop you from actually touching the Hollywood sign but it was still very cool to be on the same mountain as the sign. The very confusing and not so well marked trail made this not a very touristy trail. We came across the blog, hollywoodsigntrip.com which was very helpful with turn by turn directions in the non-marked trail.
 

The trail head is at the end of Beechwood Dr. through the Hollywood Hills.There are tons of really beautiful, large old homes in this neighboorhood. 

 

These letters are 45ft. tall!

Had to take a pic of the sign in two parts because it is over 300 ft. wide!

Standing above the smog of LA

While in LA we naturally wanted to check out some new surf breaks. We went to El Porto which is known as one of the best breaks in LA. Sadly although there were 3-4 ft. waves and absolutely no shape to the waves. Dumping, closed out really dirty beach break (it's right in front of a Cheveron power plant) is what we found and apparently the norm for this break. The El Porto area itself however was pretty cool.

El Porto Neighborhood

One of the many close outs

The reason El Porto has some of the worst water quality - power  plant right on the beach...the surf break in front of it is called Shit Pipes to give you an even better idea what you're surfing in.

Unfortunately after all this fun, we lost our car keys on the beach at El Porto so we were locked out and stranded there with no real clothes and a surfboard and wetsuit. Some nice locals felt bad for us and brought us sweaters and a sheet to keep warm and Mike found a "Team USA" t-shirt wadded up in the sand for a shirt. We also had to walk around town at night with a surfboard including to our dinner at Pancho's. Our El Porto stay was extended longer than planned but we were stoked on discovering this new part of LA we had never been to.

Mike in his awesome attire stranded outside a liquor store in LA.